no boys allowed in the room!!!!

i have had strong feelings in recent times of truly loving getting older, it's such an excellent surprise. this is not a grim acceptance of an inevitability, it's a cheerful powerful not giving a fuckery. i'm of established middle age now though, the early days of not being young any more had a bit of a twilight feeling of gloom about them.

Hearing but not understanding the language of the stars

I don't know who writes for The Toast but they've snuck some threads of remarkable beauty into their jokey lists.

I believe you, estela! I feel like being on the brink of middle age is a bit more challenging for me bc I'm close to youthfulness still. As in, if only it weren't for that one wrinkle/grey hair/baggy part, I could still be mistaken for 28! Never mind BEING 28, I wouldn't go back there for all the tea found on a large continental mass where they grow a lot of tea, but at some point I know I'll have to relax and stop clutching at whatever I'm still clutching at in a few years' time. (A tube of eyeliner, probably.)

i think when the day finally arrives you of all people will manage the transition very well.

I don't think of myself as someone with wrinkles but I'm sure I have them. It's sad to think that someone would see "wrinkles" before they see ME but I guess it probably happens. Regardless, that's on the viewer, not on me.

I don't know who writes for The Toast but they've snuck some threads of remarkable beauty into their jokey lists.

Most of the ethereal, creepy, weird stuff is Malory Ortberg. She did a parody of "Oh The Places You'll Go" yesterday that was pretty great.

:) :) My plan is too be too busy talking to people to notice until it's already over.

One of the unexpected (to me) pleasures of getting older is the thing that many women lament: becoming "invisible" to men. Once I was clearly no longer a nubile young thang, my interactions with the opposite sex became more comfortable. I no longer have the insecurity that men are acting interested and appreciative of me with ulterior motives; I feel that they are acting interested and appreciative of me because I am (hopefully) and interesting and decent human being. Getting older has meant that I feel less conscious of being female and just feel like a regular ole person most of the time.

Being a person sounds great!

Yeah I should have put some sort of emphasis on "most of the time," because as long as I look female I'm still going to be treated poorly by some.

i've heard about that (becoming invisible) and i feel like i have had a weird experience of this.. my self perception that i developed in early high school was of being v unattractive, just a tall ugly weirdo with glasses who wasn't feminine enough etc. and it stuck with me for a very long time; i was the target of a lot of mean personal criticism from my mother and had this baseline assumption that there was something wrong with me

in the past few years i started to take a little more care about how i look & gradually started to notice how totally everyday interactions with guys were often.. different than before, like i had superpowers i didn't know about

and i also started to think maybe it wasn't a bad thing to have been almost completely oblivious to this from ages 15-30 - i sincerely believed they were only interested in me as a friend or colleague - it was kind of chill and comfortable being oblivious

One of the unexpected (to me) pleasures of getting older is the thing that many women lament: becoming "invisible" to men. Once I was clearly no longer a nubile young thang, my interactions with the opposite sex became more comfortable

Sadly if youre 40+ and still single like I am, this *isnt* a good thing :(

i've heard about that (becoming invisible) and i feel like i have had a weird experience of this.. my self perception that i developed in early high school was of being v unattractive, just a tall ugly weirdo with glasses who wasn't feminine enough etc. and it stuck with me for a very long time; i was the target of a lot of mean personal criticism from my mother and had this baseline assumption that there was something wrong with me

in the past few years i started to take a little more care about how i look & gradually started to notice how totally everyday interactions with guys were often.. different than before, like i had superpowers i didn't know about

and i also started to think maybe it wasn't a bad thing to have been almost completely oblivious to this from ages 15-30 - i sincerely believed they were only interested in me as a friend or colleague - it was kind of chill and comfortable being oblivious

― seriously, THIS GUY (daria-g), Friday, December 6, 2013 4:22 AM (Yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

This is completely my experience, too. Was completely invisible from 15-30.

ever since i became an adult, and even now at almost 40, middle aged drunk guys still ask for my phone number at the corner liquor store

I dont even get catcalled. I'm not saying that should ever be a good thing but gah, whats wrong with me!?

I dont get catcalled either, because I never go outside.

If being invisible actually meant being treated like a person, chill friend/colleague interactions etc, I wd be OK with that, but in my experience it means not even being a person.

(I have often been invisible, rarely-to-never flirted with but sometimes totally blanked by dudes who were e.g. talking to me and my hott friend all evening the day before and then pretend - or maybe don't even have to pretend - they have no idea who I am when she's not there, and sometimes been the bad kind of visible: looks-based insults in the street, etc. So I'd be quite happy to reach the point where guys could ignore my looks for long enough to have a platonic conversation about my often guy-centric interests.

Or maybe the problem is just that if anyone actually wanted a conversation I'm out of practice and have forgotten how to talk to people at all. Or that I might think it meant something and then be all "but I thought he liiiked meeee" when nerdy conversations with ugly women their own age come second to bringing home hot girls half their age after all. Where's my ice floe?)

What does the long game look like for women and attractiveness and aging, because we're all pretty reasonable ppl and not youth-obsessed or w/e, and we all already know the parts about caring less, not depending on male validation, having a satisfying independent life, and so on, but none of those address the sadness of being alone when you don't want to be and looking ahead and not seeing any reasonable expectation that that will change. Or feeling like half a person bc you never see your representation being considered desirable.

And having just written that, I see that the same is true for non-white people non-able bodied people, definitely for fat ppl although I know some of us are or identify as "fat" already, so that's part of our struggle too...just true for so many people.

Is there any answer other than self-care and self-knowledge? It's necessary, isn't it, just to keep up with the damage the microaggressions do on a day-to-day basis.

If you figure that out, let me know willya? I agree with it all - I know logically I'm good and awesome and should just get on with it and I have a fun life but man, I'm lonely sometimes.

At 20 I thought the ~gender gap~ was getting better and we were on the way to a universe where people could treat each other like people and there was no need for our generation to get married because we were modern and easy-going, and now I feel like, oh, if I wanted a guy my own age I had to trick them into marrying me a decade ago and hope they were scared of divorce. Choice of being alone and not even trying forever vs putting myself on OKCupid for an occasional smattering of negs from dudes 20 years older than me.

Sorry, this isn't really the thread for venting, and I know I'm not putting very much effort into making things less difficult for myself, but.

sorry, I'm not up on everyone's personal details, but it sounds like you had a recent breakup of a long term relationship? Is that true?

Yes depending on your values of "recent", it was in May/June but on the other hand he is still living here which may be denting the getting-over-it process a little

(i.e. a hell of lot, OK, I know this, but I... don't do living on my own very well and don't want to rush into the "moving on" thing when I'm fairly sure there isn't anything to "move on" to)

PS it is totally within my personal definition of "recent", I'm just aware it's not within some other people's

Her sparse style makes me picture my grandmother reviewing local restaurants in my hometown - which I should clarify is definitely a mental image that makes me smile

oh that still counts as recent in my book, especially if you were together for a long time.

and you do have something to move on to -- a life where you are in control, as opposed to having to compromise/negotiate with this guy, who has made you unhappy

tbh it's not really him that made me unhappy so much as the realisation that wherever I go, there I am. he was a distraction from me making myself unhappy, and then he wasn't, and I'm scared of rushing into having nothing but the thoughts in my head.

but, I am cranky of late due to health worries (nothing serious, just annoying and slightly mysterious) and work stress and Christmas, and trying to fit appointments about the first around the other two, and anticipating all the relationship/breakup-related Christmas family visit smalltalk

health issues/work stress/fitting health appts around said work stress. Yes yes yes. I totally empathise with this, having just been thru it (see above). As it happens I still havent made the gyno specialist appointment :( havent had time...

and I'm scared of rushing into having nothing but the thoughts in my head.

I know that feeling! And the knowledge that your thoughts and your head are things you are stuck with for the rest of your life. Other people (esp. boyfriends/lovers/spouses) come and go, but you are pretty much stuck with yourself.

and I realized that I had two options if I didn't want an interminably miserable life:

1. I am actually a good person and will work on making myself like me and making me someone I would like
2. suicide

Trayce I'm not sure if I posted during your health issues but they sounded v. stressful indeed! hope things are going better, also go and see the gyno (and I should do something similar myself)

thanks sarahell, I guess 1 is a good way to look at it instead of my brain shutting down at "I need to be someone else completely right now, but I can't, so ???" rather than concentrating on the "working on" part.

Although I am really resistant to the "working on" thing, it turns out. There are things I know I would like myself more if I could do, and keep doing, but I can't ever seem to make myself do them. The charitable reading is that it's just comforting being the same old mess I've always been rather than heading into the unknown. There are less charitable ones, of course...

i definitely went through a long phase of fearing that "the loneliness of not having a man will permeate every moment of my being" -- and as the years of being single have gone by (I am at year 4 now), that loneliness has occupied less and less of my time. it has gotten occasionally annoying when a well-meaning friend will ask me if I'm seeing anyone or interested in anyone, and my response is, "Actually, no. And I'm pretty content. Almost happy, even!"

it was in May/June but on the other hand he is still living here which may be denting the getting-over-it process a little

Oh sweetie! This may be super nerdy and corny, but maybe in orbit would appreciate this, but this situation reminds me of poor widow Hornwood in Game of Thrones, who ended up married to this sociopath, who married her for her title and lands, and then locked her in a tower and starved her, so she ended up eating her fingers before she eventually died. In other words, this sounds like a really unhealthy situation, and while you presumably have food and freedom of movement, it is starving you of self-esteem and the power to move on.

I've been single forever, so I am used to it. But I am very rarely lonely. I have loose plans to Grey Gardens it up with my sisters in 20 yrs.

Having a 'partner' does not necessarily combat loneliness.

No kidding!! I was born lonely.

otm

Thats more what I was getting at Mand! I dont even want a partner necesarily. I would like some male companionship that didnt get drunk and shout unhinged stupid shit at me every other weekend, tho.

I'm reading Why Does He Do That: Inside the Minds of Angry and Controlling Men, and it's disconcerting how many of my boyfriends have had at least some of these traits (and I'm only on page 84). I'm going for no companionship instead of unhinged and shouty.

I hear that.

Also that book sounds like an interesting read.

Having a 'partner' does not necessarily combat loneliness.

Oh sure, I very much realise that.

It's not even really about lonely or not lonely. It's just that having someone else in the flat mostly keeps me out of that bad headspace where it feels like I go to work and I come home and someone presses fast-forward and I buy food and cook and eat and wash up and sleep and go to work again and there is no space for anything in between, and every negative thought and every unidentified external noise or even smell gets amplified into an insane feedback loop. (If this sounds mad it's probably because, well, it is, but it's what I get.)

But I don't let people into my life easily, I don't get comfortable around people easily, so "get a new flatmate" is not a very comforting answer either. Though I like living here but I'm not 100% sure I could afford it alone.

Oh, spacecadet, I wish I could be your Fairy God-gender-neutral-Parent (but not too genderqueer to get kicked off the gurl thread) and tell you things will be Better on the other side of I-Don't-Give-A-Fuck, but there is no "Better" really, over here, there is only "Different".

But the one thing I can say with 100% confidence and accuracy, is that living in the ruins of a recently (yes, that is recently) collapsed relationship is horrible, head-twisty poisonous place to be, and you *do* have something to look forward to, in that living by yourself (which I do now) or living with/as a lodger in a stated "we don't socialise" situation (as I did before I lived here, and yes, you can view it as a purely business arrangement, that is a thing) is so much better than wandering around the ruins of What Didn't Work. You do have something to look forward to, and it's not being in that situation any more. Living alone, inside a head that tells you bad things about yourself in that feedback loop I know ~so well~ is still way, way better than living with a constant daily reminder of your romantic failures.

I mean, there are so! many! things! I could say about ageing and dating and singleness and attractiveness and how fucking unfair and gender-slanted these things are in a really unjust way - I never thought as myself as "pretty", I was always too... I dunno, aggressive and manly? But I was certainly *something* that men responded to a certain way when I was younger; and I couldn't wait to get older, so that people would Start Taking Me Seriously! Except, as I got older, and that sexyness, (which wasn't really prettiness, but was certainly youth) faded, I didn't find that people started Taking Me Seriously! they just started not taking me at all. Which was a whole new level of frustrating - but talking about all those things that would make me RAAAAAAGE and I'm not really feeling very ~into~ rage at the moment.

Spacecadet, you've probably worked out who I am by now (and if you have, please don't shout and wave it about; I remain touchy about that kinda shit) but for real - if you're feeling holiday blues, or post-holiday blues in January, come to London for the weekend to be irresponsible and bunk all the stress. We can go to the Science Museum and be 2 fat, middle-aged IT nerds geeking it up over the Babbage Machines. It'll be ossum.

Wise, wise words re living with an ex.

Hi Branwell! Thanks for your post, it was much appreciated. Hope you're doing OK. Babbaging does sound pretty ossum although I'm somewhat in recluse mode and have no idea how much time family are going to take up over Christmas.

I would like to feel less ~into~ rage, or maybe I am already not into it and it just happens anyway.

Why can't we all just be people and be into what we're into and look like whatever we look like? I know, I know, silly me.

(thoughts of Radical Faerie Godparents here)

Well I mean you CAN be into what you're into and look however you look. You just won't be equally valued by everyone, esp on the second count, esp if you're female-presenting. The thing that is unknowable and also worries me kinda is, it's easy to say, Any guy (in my case) who doesn't like me however I look without huge efforts is better off ruled out so I can focus my energy on other things...but what if that's every guy that I like? Blah.

It's kind of like free speech? You can say what you want, but it's not free of consequences.

What to do when you're not ~into~ "raaaaage" is a really good question and that's one that a year of therapy still hasn't ironed out. But I know that it's one that has to be dealt with because, firstly and less importantly, "OMG, you're so ~angry~ and ~bitter~" is always used to de-legitimise women, even in response to legitimately angry-making things. But more importantly, raaaage turns inwards and gets re-directed at yourself in those "negative thought goes round and round" patterns and leads to anxiety and depression and all those shitty places.

What is rage *for*? In limited doses, it's good for writing and doing blog posts and it's really good for drawing comics, as I've been discovering. But when it goes beyond that, and just starts eating you up, man, I don't wanna do that any more. Feel the rage and put it aside, and then go and talk to women and ask "what do we do with this rage?"

The thing is, it takes courage to just be what you're into, and look like what you look like, when you've got the whole world telling you that you should be a different way. And it really doesn't help when you get schlubby dudes going (sorry, I saw this happen in another thread recently) "oh god I'd never date IT girls because they don't have the ~confidence~ to dress all feminine, like, the way I think they should to appeal to my all-important schlubby dude libido!" To which the reply is "FUCK YOU *boot to the head* actually it takes more confidence than you will ever know to express my gender in the way I feel comfortable expressing it, and not bow down to whatever stupid shit you think I should do to my appearance to make it conform to whatever version of 'femininity' makes *you* comfortable or horny!" (except generally *boot to the head* is rather frowned upon in our society, so just think it, or act it out with your finger flicks rather than actually sinking your doc martens in their cranium, because who needs the legal hassle, y'know?)

What the fuck is "value" anyway? And I'm just bored with the idea that the only "value" women can have is fuckability (sorry, not picking on you, in orbit, you know I think you're the bees knees) and I think that might be Urgent & Key to clawing back our dignity or self-worth or whatever as we have the audacity to age and because less fuckable to schlubby dudes of the internet. Your value is wisdom, your value is experience, your value is knowledge - all those things women are no longer allowed to exemplify because we're not allowed to ~embrace the crone nature~ any more. (Wow, that sounded cheesy, but that "sudden onset cronery" link that was posted the other day - that was truly awesome and inspiring.)

Blah blah blah, sorry, I just really missed this thread. *goes back to lurk mode*

Oh yeah, and Babbaging offer is open for any time, redeemable in the New Year or whenever. I just want you to know I'd totally hang out with you, and the offer is there.

Oh BTW ladies: I am aware that it is almost criminally insane for me to start a thread about gender on ILX, but I would appreciate some female viewpoints on my Do U Has A Gender poll:

Core or Innate Gender Identity: Do You Have One?

I completely understand not wanting to discuss it there (in fact, I'm probably going to bow out of any discussion because good lord, I cannot do clusterfucks any more) but I would really appreciate the data. Thanks in advance!

That thread is going well so far. It will only take one asshole to run it off the rails, but I think you can take comfort in the fact that most posters seem willing to discuss the topic in good faith. So far.